My friend is a graphics designer for a large company, working on multiple projects simultaneously. Unfortunately, each project manager thinks their project is the highest priority. So after several months of extreme pressure and being pulled from one project to another, my friend basically quit caring. She goes to work, does her job, and comes home at night. One might call her “retired in place”, although she’s only in her 40s. A more current term is “quiet quitting.” The pressure from all her project managers was not only nonproductive, but counterproductive. Her GSI went from 7 to 2.

What’s a GSI? I coined the term “GSI”, which stands for “Give a S### Index” when I was drafted into the army in 1969. I used a scale of 1-10 to measure people’s attitudes, with 10 being the highest. In the army, my GSI (and that of most draftees) was a negative ten. I did my job, kept my nose clean, and got out as quickly as I could. What’s the GSI in your organization? And what can you, as a leader, do to improve it?

My grandpa used to remind me that I was born with one mouth and two ears, so maybe I should listen twice as much as I talked. Here are two approaches to improving GSI – and I encourage you to try both:

1. Create informal listening opportunities – lunch or coffee with the CEO, etc. Have executives deliberately sit with employees in the cafeteria and break room. As employees become more comfortable with the CEO’s presence, they’ll start opening up. One variation is the HP practice of Managing by Wandering Around.
2. Run an organizational health survey. One such survey is Vantage Point™, created by 25 organization development professionals in the Oregon Organization Development Network more than 10 years ago. You might be surprised at the results. More information can be found at www.vantagepointsurvey.com.

Gary Langenwalter

*Image by wayhomestudio on Freepik. Thanks.